Indian tribe defiant after legal victory

Not on our land.
India’s booming economy means a growing demand for the resources and raw materials which feed its factories, but one indigenous community under threat is determined to protect its way of life.

Posted 21 July 2011, by Justin Rowlatt, BBC, news.bbc.co.uk

The ceremony began when the shaman came staggering out of his hut.

He had splashes of fresh blood daubed on his face and stared blindly as he began a shuffling, swaying dance to the rhythm of the drums.

After a few moments the first woman fell to the ground.

The Dongria's sacred mountain is rich in bauxite

She seemed to be having some kind of fit.

I watched in the flickering firelight as she jerked spastically on the ground, her legs twisted at an improbable angle underneath her.

Seconds later she lurched up to her feet and, bent double at the waist, she began to sway, her feet stamping in rough time, her long black hair hanging down over her head and face.

Soon eight people had joined in, all bent over, all apparently also in a deep trance.

The witchdoctor took up two fierce-looking, long, curved swords which he waved around in front of him.

This was becoming genuinely frightening.

We were in an isolated forest clearing deep in the hills of the Indian state of Orissa.

We don’t need your schools, we don’t need your houses and we don’t need your road Lado, village headman

I turned towards Lado, the village headman.

I was surprised to see he was smiling broadly.

He was clearly thoroughly enjoying the festivities – and, I suspected, my discomfiture too.

“They have been possessed by gods,” he explained, “maybe the god of the Earth, of the forest or Niyam Raja, the god of our mountain.

“Whatever they do now is not them, it is the play of the gods.”

Sacred mountain

I was here because the traditional way of life of the Dongria tribe has come crashing up against modern India’s seemingly insatiable appetite for resources.

A refinery has already been built to process ore from the planned mine

Niyamgiri, the mountain the Dongria people worship and whose spirit possessed the dancers, contains an incredibly rich seam of bauxite, the ore from which aluminium is made.

According to some estimates, the bauxite in Niyamgiri mountain could be worth more than $2bn (£1.25bn).

The scale of the threat became apparent when Lado led me on an exhausting five-hour trek over the mountain.

He wanted to show me the $1bn aluminium processing plant built way down in the valley, by a UK-based multinational called Vedanta.

Lado described how, a couple of years ago, one of the vice-presidents of Vedanta had come to the village and had offered to pour money into the community, if they would support mining the bauxite in Niyamgiri mountain.

Lado said he had told the company’s men: “We don’t need your schools, we don’t need your houses and we don’t need your road.”

It is so difficult for us to get our message across Tony, Vedanta spokesman

When they tried to take photos, he threatened to smash their cameras.

“They left pretty soon after that,” Lado told me with a grin.

Lado is an easy man to like and it was hard not to enjoy the pride he felt having seen off the representatives of this powerful multinational.

But, in my experience, the apparently inexorable power of money and modernisation almost always wins out against the claims of indigenous people.

Nevertheless, as Lado and I talked, I had a sneaking suspicion that the Dongria might be an exception to the rule.

‘Important victory’

When the aluminium plant was built, it seemed mining the bauxite in Niyamgiri mountain was a done deal.

The government of Orissa signed a memorandum of understanding giving permission, and the Indian government assured Vedanta that its vast investment here would be secure.

Then Lado and his fellow tribespeople began their campaign – and managed to get support from around the world.

Soon Vedanta’s investment began to seem a lot less safe.

Last year, the tribe won an important victory, when the Indian environment minister ruled that no mining could take place on Niyamgiri mountain.

Vedanta is now challenging that decision in India’s Supreme Court.

I was keen to hear the company’s side of the story and Vedanta had agreed to an interview but, when they spotted us in town talking with Lado and some other tribal people, they called it off.

“It is so difficult for us to get our message across,” Tony, Vedanta’s spokesman said plaintively, as he explained why the company had changed its mind.

I could understand his frustration.

Here in Lanjigarh, Vedanta has built schools and roads and a modern hospital.

It has also created 1,500 jobs.

There is no doubt that allowing mining on Niyamgiri mountain would generate a lot more money for people here, but there is also no question that the Dongria have a very strong claim to the land.

The problem is that mining the bauxite here would destroy not just the land the Dongria have lived on for centuries – quite possibly millennia – but also their god.

I felt rather sorry for Tony and Vedanta.

It is very hard to justify destroying someone’s god, however compelling your case.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9542509.stm

Children share when they work together, chimps do not

Children share when they work together, chimps do not

Posted 20 July 2011, by Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, blogs.discovermagazine.com

We are a cooperative ape, and a fair one. We work together to put food on the table and once it’s there, social rules compel us to share it around equitably. These two actions are tied to one another. In a new study, Katharina Hamannfrom the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has shown that three-year-old children are more likely to fairly divide their spoils with other kids if they’ve worked together to get them.

The same can’t be said of chimpanzees, one of our closest relatives. Sharing comes less naturally to them, and it doesn’t become any more likely if they’ve worked together to get a meal.

Hamann says, “Among great apes, only humans are true collaborative foragers.” Other species might look for food together, but being next to one another is not the same as working together. The only exception are the hunting parties of chimps, where several individuals work together to kill monkeys for food. The slain monkeys are shared, but either under duress or in exchange for favours.

With children, things are very different. Studies have shown that children as young as five to seven start sharing resources fairly among one another. On the other hand, when younger children come across a windfall of sweets, they tend to keep the majority for themselves. It’s tempting to think that children only develop a sharing ethic when they approach school age, but Hamann realised that something was missing.

In all the previous studies, scientists had given children an unexpected hand-out. What would happen if the kids had to work together to get their own rewards – a more common situation, and one that better reflects our evolutionary past.

Hamann ushered pairs of two- or three-year-old children towards a board with two small marbles at either end. By pulling on two ropes, the children could bring the board towards them, but as it slid across, one marble would roll over to the other side. Hamann found that the “lucky” child would often offer one of their three marbles to their partner – around half the time for the two-year-olds and around 70% of the time for the three-year-olds. And they were more likely to share if they had worked together than if the board was already within reach.

In a second study, Hamann refined the original experiment by bunching all the marbles together in a pile at the start. This ensured that the children didn’t automatically think that one set was theirs and one belonged to their partner. She also created a version of the board that had been split in half, so each child pulled on a separate one. The three-year-olds still shared more often when they worked together than when they worked in parallel, or not at all. The two-year-olds, however, behaved in a similar way across the three set-ups.

The chimp version of the same experiment was a bit more complicated. Chimps rarely offer food to each other in the wild, so Hamann needed a way for them to do so without actively handing something over. She built a device that forced two chimps to pull a board using two ropes, in order to bring grapes within reach. As they did so, one of the grapes rolled to the other side, and fell down onto a see-saw on a lower level. Either chimp could then tilt the see-saw either towards itself, to claim the fallen grape.

On two-thirds of the trials, the unlucky chimp “almost immediately” tipped the see-saw towards itself and took the fallen grape. On the rest of them, the lucky one claimed the grape. The lucky chimp never rolled the grape back towards its partner to equalise their shares. When Hamann stopped the unlucky chimp from tilting the see-saw, the lucky one almost always grabbed the grape. Even if the device was rigged so that the lucky chimp lost the grape if it tilted the see-saw towards itself, it only shared it on a sixth of the trials.

Collaboration didn’t matter to the chimps. They were no more likely to share the grapes if they had worked together than if the food was already available from the start.

“This is an elegant study,” says Ian Gilby, who studies cooperation among wild primates at Duke University. “I’m not at all surprised at the conclusion.” He notes that the results fit with the behaviour that scientists have observed in wild chimpanzees. “Hunting at most research sites is more accurately described as ‘every chimpanzee for himself’. Meat is shared with persistent beggars, and in some cases, in return for other currencies such as grooming or coalitionary support. There is little evidence that meat is distributed according to a male’s role in the hunt.”

To Hamann, the key difference between the two species is that humans rely on one another to get their food, but chimps do not. When they forage, collaboration is the exception not the rule. As such, they haven’t evolved the tendency to distribute the spoils of teamwork. If they take a bigger share for themselves, other chimps might not work with them in the future, but that hardly matters if collaborative hunting is a niche activity. The value of sharing only became important when individuals needed to work together to feed themselves.

John Mitani who studies primate behaviour at the University of Michigan, says, “I agree that there is something different about human sharing and sharing in other organisms, including our close relatives, chimpanzees.”

But Mitani adds a word of caution, noting that Hamann tested the chimps and children with different resource. “Why not test the human kids with food that they are likely to value, say candy?  This would be akin to the grapes that probably represent a treat to the chimpanzees.  I’m old enough to have played with marbles as a kid, but I don’t remember being cognizant of their value when I was 2 or 3 years old.” This seems particularly strange given that the paper’s hypothesis is that our tendency to work together while looking for food could have led to our propensity for sharing.

Reference: Hamann, Warneken, Greenberg & Tomasello. 2011. Collaboration encourages equal sharing in children but not in chimpanzees. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10278

More on cooperation and sharing:

• Pay it forward? Cooperative behaviour spreads through a group, but so does cheating
• Envious capuchin monkeys react badly to raw deals
• Genes affect our likelihood to punish unfair play
• Carrots trump sticks for fostering cooperation
• Altruistic chimpanzees clearly help each other out
• Children learn to share by age 7-8

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/07/20/children-share-when-they-work-together-chimps-do-not/

Agriculture, a contributor to socio-economic well-being

Posted 21 July 2011, by Ridma Dissanayake, Daily News (The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd), dailynews.lk

Agriculture has long been of high importance to Sri Lanka’s economy and society. It contributes 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product and has 34 percent of country’s employment according to the 2006 report of the Centre of Environmental Justice (CEJ). It is the most important source of employment for majority of Sri Lanka’s workforce. Approximately 38 percent of the total labour force is engaged in agriculture according to 1999 statistics.

Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute (HARTI) held a lecture series for journalists recently to make them aware of agriculture and to create an attitudinal change in the society about agriculture. It was held in Nuwara-Eliya from June 15 to 17 with the participation of lecturers such as Prof. Sunanda Mahendra, Prof. Rohana Lakshman Piyadasa and environmentalist Thilak Kandegama.

Modern methods and techniques

Environmental agriculture had special focus in this programme and environmentalist Thilak Kandegama conducted several lectures on the subject.

Experts say modern methods and techniques which are used in the agriculture field are harmful to health and environment. According to farmers they have reverted to traditional methods in farming to reduce risks. Local health experts say producing food by using traditional methods are nutritious and not harmful to the environment.

Kandegama said the sun and the moon affect agriculture activities and the sunrays that fall on to the earth tend to vary the life circle of plants. When supplying water for the growth of plants, the moon is very important. The moon, sun and other ancient practices lead to a good harvest, experts said.

Traditional methods are eco-friendly. Such eco-friendly farming methods and techniques help preserve the environment and consumers’ health. Using modern methods and techniques cause various illnesses such as cancer, skin infections and kidney problems, experts point out.

With the goal of introducing an environmentally friendly farming system to Sri Lanka, a 12 acre farm commenced in Nawalapitiya in 2009 and it is now popular as Kandegedara ecological farm.

Training programmes

According to Kandegama, the ancient Chena cultivation method is the most suitable and simple traditional farming method in Sri Lanka. Before using any other cultivation method, farmers should pay attention to the geographical location of Sri Lanka as it is a country which is the most biodiverse than other countries in the world, he said.

When following the Chena cultivation method, first the location for plantation need to be assessed. After that the land is cleared and burned. Then Kurahan seeds are planted and when they grow six inches, crops seeds are planted. When they grow nine inches other plants such as vegetables, fruits and flowers are planted in the nutrient-rich soil.

Then it will become a successful Chena or Nava Dalu Chena. Thus the environment provides elements to control insect without any chemicals.

We have visited vegetable farms in Nuwara-Eliya and we have held discussions with farmers there as part of a training programme, he said. It helps all journalists to have a good knowledge about the agriculture field in Sri Lanka.

HARTI Director Lalith Kantha Jayasekara, Deputy Director Dr. L. P. Rupasinghe, Human Resources and Institutional Development Unit’s Head Dr. M. S. Senanayake, Agriculture Policies and Project Evaluation Unit’s Head J. K. M. D. Chandrasiri, News and Publication Unit’s Head Pujitha De Mel and Information and Publication Officers C. U. Senanayake and Wathsala Gamage also participated in this programme.

(Ed Note: Please visit the original site to view the photographs associated with this article)

http://www.dailynews.lk/2011/07/21/fea02.asp

True sustainability targets self-reliance in region

Posted 21 July 2011, by Galen Chadwick, News-Leader (Gannett), news-leader.com

Springfield’s draft 20-year strategic plan includes the “diverse interests” of bankers, financial experts, realtors, city employees, and advocates for low-income residents who created the housing plan [July 3rd, 2011].

Didn’t these same folks generate the Vision 2020 plan, equally memorable for lack of citizen euphoria? Also to be noted: the LEEDS standard has changed four times in five years, begging questions about message and direction.

While we’re at it, will somebody please define “sustainability”?

If the planners cannot, why should we get involved? Truth is, the urge to control the “sustainability franchise” by business and institutional elites is old hat. Springfield’s Partnership for Sustainability, to name one, seems created for the singular purpose of defining “green wash.” Two questions: How much of our money have they spent, and “where’s the beef?”

One of the oddities of “sustainability” planning is that people arrive already committed to protecting vested interests, wedded to bedrock assumptions of the Chamber of Commerce present. But globalism will fail when OPEC oil ends. Odds favor a major terrorist attack sooner than later. A minority perspective is essential to strategic thinking: “What if our normalcy bias is wrong?”

Journalistic skepticism, like the proverbial needle, seems missing in this haystack. Not to mention the elephant in the room. Springfield no longer grows or manufactures the bare minimum required to sustain civic cohesion. If we had to independently feed, house, clothe, and fuel ourselves again, using local and regional resources, what will it take? How long? How much? How many?

Quantifiable answers exist, suggesting the practicable mechanics of a true sustainability mission: “In 20 years, Springfield restores its food, energy, and economic self-reliance to its highest historic levels.”

Restoring food and energy freedom is the basis of continued political autonomy. Legalize sustainability! Begin by passing a food sovereignty ordinance like that of Sedgwick, Maine [http://www. naturalnews.com/]

A better plan would connect relocalization with sustainability and be grounded in a bioregional [food shed] framework. Planning and zoning departments can partner across some 30 counties to coordinate regional restoration. City councils can incentivize and relocalize building material industries, change building and housing codes to create demand, jobs and a vibrant economy.

The production of local biodiesel requires only 1890s technology. A few hundred acres of sunflowers can fuel trucks and tractors in every township, and recent field trials show costs matching imported diesel!

News-Leader support for mandating locally grown food in public schools, universities, jails, and hospitals would help. Beyond food security, a revived tax base would more than relieve Springfield’s chronic revenue shortfall.

Springfield’s City Utilities commitment to sustainability exhausts the Buddhist ideal of formlessness, leaving substantive ideas to others. How about promoting voluntary energy vulnerability audits for businesses, recasting the supply chain metrics for oil-dependent products, and researching redevelopment of surface coal deposits 50 miles north of the city?

Our foreign oil addiction is not sustainable; transition and relocalization is the only way forward. We face the collapse of an era. Ignoring this fact is no plan at all.

Editor’s note: City Utilities began experimenting with biodiesel fuel in 2005 with buses running on a 2 percent blend of soybean oil and diesel fuel. CU was testing the product in all CU buses to see how well it performs. A CU spokesman confirms that a biodiesel mix is still being used in the bus fleet.

Galen Chadwick is with Well Fed Neighbor Alliance and Feed Missouri First Coalition. He lives in Springfield.

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011107210316

Group pushes province on environmental assessment standards

A northwestern B.C. group is pushing for changes to the provincial environmental review process.

Posted 20 July 2011, by Derrick Penner, The Vancouver Sun (Postmedia Network), vancouversun.com

VANCOUVER — With the potential for billions of dollars worth of resource development projects building up in British Columbia, a northwestern B.C. group is pushing for changes to the provincial environmental review process.

The Smithers-based Northwest Institute for Bioregional Research used Taseko Mines Ltd.’s Prosperity mine proposal southwest of Williams Lake, which was approved by the provincial environmental process but rejected by the federal review, as its example to argue that the federal process is more rigorous and the provincial approach needs strengthening.

The institute sees it as an important issue because with so many projects in the works there is increasing pressure from industry on governments to harmonize the assessment process, said Pat Moss, the group’s executive director.

“In principle, I don’t oppose [harmonization],” Moss said. “But it certainly can’t be to the lowest common denominator.”

Typically it is the province that bears the responsibility for environmental assessments of major projects on Crown land, but projects such as the Prosperity proposal trigger a federal assessment when they cross into areas of federal jurisdiction, such as its responsibility for fish habitat under the Fisheries Act.

In its review of the Prosperity situation, Moss made the case that the federal process appears to be more thorough and accommodating of public input.

The Northwest Institute commissioned environmental lawyer Mark Haddock to review the different processes.

Haddock, an associate of the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre, concluded that the B.C. process proceeded without complete information, lacked clearly defined standards that federal legislation contains and missed or dismissed impacts the federal process defined as significant in favour of the proposed mine’s economic benefits.

Moss said she doesn’t oppose factoring economic issues into a review, but “I don’t think they should trump environmental concerns.”

“The closer you get to the site of projects, and if the assessment is done at the provincial level, there is just that much more pressure on governments and regulators [to approve projects],” she added.

“I think it’s really critical we continue to have that federal oversight.”

B.C. Environment Minister Terry Lake defended the provincial process as being thorough.

“Of course the environment has to be at the top of the list, but I think it’s important to consider those other aspects [of economic and social benefits], which for the federal review perhaps don’t carry the same sort of weighting,” Lake said.

“At the same time, we always need to be looking at how we do things and if there are concerns out there or criticisms, we always need to listen and find ways of doing things better.”

Lake said the Ministry of Environment has already taken action on a recent report by the B.C. Auditor-General’s Office that highlighted a lack of oversight of projects once they were approved by the environmental assessment office.

Lake said his ministry has created a position for a director whose job is to ensure that the agencies responsible for issuing permits to resource projects are overseeing compliance with conditions imposed as part of their environmental reviews.

On harmonization, Lake said the goal is to cooperate with federal agencies where projects cross jurisdictions so there is no duplication of effort, but he said that might not always be possible, and doubts it will result in unified decisions.

“I don’t think we should ever take away the ability to have independent decision-making,” Lake said, because the levels of government have different obligations within their jurisdictions.

Pierre Gratton, president of the Mining Association of Canada, said that in one harmonization experiment Ottawa has delegated responsibility for managing the assessment process to the province so there is no duplication, but has not ceded its own decision-making authority.

“The industry accepts there will be times when projects will be turned down,” Gratton said, but the industry would prefer to learn that earlier in a process where proponents are generating only one set of reports and going through a single public-consultation process.

depenner@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Group+pushes+province+environmental+assessment+standards/5134384/story.html

Don’t let Northwest become an eco-victim

MY VIEW • Poor planning will hurt when climate refugees pour in

Posted 21 July 2011, by Jonathan Brandt, The Portland Tribune (Pamplin Media Group), portlandtribune.com

The Glen Canyon Dam, upstream from the Grand Canyon in Page, Ariz., is the second-largest dam on the Colorado River. Global warming is projected to exacerbate drought conditions in the Southwest, which could bring many “climate change refugees” to Oregon. Jeff Topping / Getty Images

I’m appreciative of Kat West’s essay in your Eco-thoughts series (Portland should brace for ‘climate refugees’, June 9). I would disagree with her that there are no alternatives to welcoming climate refugees. She’s right that we have to act as a region, and as a larger Cascadian bioregion, we have great access to rangeland, forests and fishing, as well as the fertile Willamette Valley.

Planning for the worst, if the predictions about drought in the Midwest are correct, we’ll have a major problem feeding all of the expected climate refugees. This means that the poorest of our region will go hungry as they are priced-out by wealthier refugees. Morally, it seems wrong that we would choose the suffering of our fellow Cascadians so that those who chose not to prevent their environmental self-destruction can elbow us from the table.

The other option that was not mentioned by West is the secession option.

No state should feel obligated to rely on the federal government to assure our prosperity in the face of economic turmoil. The pace and effectiveness of our US government is not equipped to deal with climate change on top of recession on top of energy descent.

Our history as a bioregional government included the areas of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, with its first capital in Oregon City. A new government of this Cascadian watershed democracy, the kind of governmental system proposed by John Wesley Powell, would not be too unfamiliar to our independent pioneer sensibilities.

With the coordination of a bio-regional government, should the worst occur, one plan could be to politely close our borders to non-Cascadians save for a limited number of eco-refugees – a more appropriate term that includes economic as well as ecological displacement. As our bioregion’s productivity can support more hungry mouths, while reducing our carbon footprint, so then we could accept more refugees.

http://www.portlandtribune.com/opinion/story.php?story_id=131119482542394500

Marine mystery solved: ‘Rare’ bacteria in the ocean ain’t necessarily so

Posted 21 July 2011, by Tracey Bryant, PhysOrg, physorg.com

(PhysOrg.com) — A teaspoon of seawater contains thousands of naturally occurring bacteria. Scientists previously believed that less than half of these ocean microbes are actively taking up organic compounds, while the remainder — a mix of rare species — lie dormant.

Not so, according to researchers from the University of Delaware and the University of Southern California. In a study reported in the July 18 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the UD-USC team found that over half the bacterial species sampled from ocean surface waters actively cycled between abundant and rare, and only about 12 percent always remained rare and potentially inactive.

“Scientists have been interested in shedding light on this so-called ‘rare biosphere’ made up of a huge diversity of bacteria,” says Barbara Campbell, assistant professor of marine biosciences in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. “The surprise is that many of these bacteria are actually quite active, and they cycle from low to great abundance.”

Campbell’s co-authors on the study include David Kirchman, Maxwell P. and Mildred H. Harrington Professor of Marine Biosciences at UD, and John Heidelberg, associate professor of biological sciences at USC.

Every month for three years, Campbell and colleagues collected water samples from a site in the Atlantic Ocean near UD’s Hugh R. Sharp Campus in Lewes, Del. Then using a high-throughput sequencing technique at USC, the researchers examined a portion of the genome of individual microbial species — the ribosomal RNA — a gene involved in enzyme production. The more copies of RNA present, the more metabolically active the cell. The team analyzed over 500,000 sequences.

For the first time, Campbell says, the team saw some of the bacteria switch from being rare to abundant. Their findings also suggest that although abundance follows activity in the majority of species, a significant portion of the rare community is active, some with growth rates that decrease as abundance increases.

“Many of these bacteria cycle between abundant and rare, and there’s a reason for that,” Campbell notes. “Bacteria that lie dormant appear to serve as seeds for the future community — like a microbial seed bank.”

The scientists are now trying to explain what causes the cells to become dormant and active again. It doesn’t appear to be seasonally driven or to correlate much with the environment, but it may be driven by the microbial community itself, Campbell explains.

“When one bacteria is happy, it’s in association with its cousins in a community. You might say it likes it neighborhood,” Campbell says.

Better understanding the microbial world matters, Campbell points out, since these tiny organisms not only provide food for other organisms, but also affect the cycling of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur throughout the ocean and across the entire planet, with important implications for climate change and other phenomena.

She also notes that the molecular methods used in the research may be applied to other problems, such as determining at your local beach if the bacteria that affect water quality are alive and replicating.

More information: http://www.pnas.or … 108.abstract

Provided by University of Delaware (news : web)

 

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-marine-mystery-rare-bacteria-ocean.html

CT College awarded $200k grant to develop environmental justice curriculum

 

Posted 20 July 2011, by Karen L, Zip 06 (The Day), theday.com

With a new grant to revolutionize the environmental justice curriculum, Connecticut College faculty will help students better understand their place in the world and the responsibility they bear to their neighbors.

?We have seen an increase in the number of students with an interest in international studies and environmental programs,? said project lead Jane Dawson, the Virginia Eason Weinmann ’51 Professor of Government at Connecticut College. ?Developing specific programming to merge these academic areas will ensure that our students consider global environmental justice issues seriously and deeply.?

A $200,000 grant from The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation will allow a core group of faculty to be trained in the teaching of international environmental issues and learn firsthand about the links between global environmental problems and social injustices. The funding will support a faculty development seminar, fieldwork in India, Peru and South Africa and a curriculum development seminar during the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 academic years.

The 19 participating faculty members will revise existing courses and develop new courses with a focus on environmental justice, provide students with new research and study abroad opportunities, expand community outreach and host a regional conference with Connecticut College?s Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment.

“This is a unique opportunity for faculty from a broad range of disciplines — philosophy, dance, physics, gender and women?s studies, economics, religious studies — to gain new expertise in an emerging and increasingly urgent field of study,” Dean of the Faculty Roger Brooks said. “The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation is giving us the opportunity to revolutionize the way we teach environmental justice.”

Following on-campus training, faculty will examine specific cases of international environmental justice issues in three key sites abroad. In South Africa, for example, many preservationist efforts have been perceived as promoting park creation and wildlife protection at the expense of the socioeconomic development of impoverished communities. A group of six faculty members will visit Table Mountain National Park in Cape Town for an on-site seminar about how these issues play out on a local, national and international level.

About The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation

The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation is dedicated to the life of the mind and spirit. Since its founding in 1952, the Foundation has focused its attention primarily on the field of education, which nurtures and liberates the best in human imagination and action. The Foundation devotes most of its funds to projects that make a significant institutional difference in liberal arts colleges.

About Connecticut College

Situated on the coast of southern New England, Connecticut College is a highly selective private liberal arts college with 1900 students from all across the country and throughout the world. On the college?s 750-acre arboretum campus overlooking Long Island Sound, students and faculty create a vibrant social, cultural and intellectual community enriched by diverse perspectives. The college, founded in 1911, is known for its unique combination of interdisciplinary studies, international programs, funded internships, student-faculty research and service learning. For more information, visit www.connecticutcollege.edu.

The college is celebrating its centennial in 2011 with an array of events for students, alumni, faculty, staff and the community. For more information, visit http://centennial.conncoll.edu/.

 

http://www.theday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/misc?url=/static/zip06_aboutus.pbs

Fracking: Monterey shale exploration draws protest [Updated]

 

Posted 19 July 2011, by Ashlie Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times (Tribune), latimesblogs.latimes.com

Environmental groups filed a formal protest this week with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management calling for a halt to the leasing of 2,600-acres in California’s Fresno and Monterey counties for oil and gas shale exploration. They said  future drilling would likely involve high-pressure hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a new drilling method linked to water contamination in other parts of the country.

“It seemed to us the BLM  was lowballing these areas to sale given current economic conditions,” said Matt Vespa, an attorney at the Center of Biological Diversity.

The BLM’s environmental assessment failed to “take a hard look at the environmental consequences” of fracking. The assessment used historical data from the past 20 years that is not up to date on the new process, Vespa said.

The shale is near the San Antonio reservoir watershed and the area is home to threatened wildlife, the San Joaquin kit fox and blunt-nosed leopard lizard.

Besides the Center for Biological Diversity, the formal protest was signed by the Sierra Club and Los Padres ForestWatch. The coalition is requesting a thorough review of potential effects of fracking and proposed alternatives. It is asking the BLM to cancel the sale scheduled for September, when interested oil companies can bid on the land.

David Christy, spokesman for the BLM, said the department is reviewing the formal protest and has no immediate comment.

Tupper Hull, spokesperson for the Western States Petroleum Assn., said people are misinformed about fracking in California. “Hydrualic fracking in California is quite different from other practices,” Hull said, pointing out that companies drill for gas in the Marcellus shale, on the East Coast,  whereas West Coast operations drill for crude oil.

“Natural gas generated in the Marcellus shale region involves large operations,” Hull said. “In California they’re smaller, single operations, they don’t involve enormous amounts of water, they’re not ongoing, and often times the wells are only used once.” [Clarification July 21 10:44 a.m. : Hull was not referring to individual wells but to the hydraulic fracturing operation, which only occurs once.]

Environmental groups say fracking, which involves injecting rock formations with high-pressure water, sand and chemicals to release tightly-packed hydrocarbons, can result in the leaking of toxic fluids and methane into groundwater, as well as above-ground wastewater spills. The airborne release of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, is a major concern with fracking.

“We need to protect our water, air and communities from this potentially harmful drilling,” said Rita Dalessio of the Sierra Club’s Ventana Chapter conservation committee. “Drilling should not come with the sacrifice of our beautiful California landscapes and certainly not our health.”

EarthJustice, an Oakland-based environmental law firm, estimates that 70 hydraulic fracturing accidents have occured in recent years, the majority in the Marcellus Shale — the biggest gas fracking area in the U.S., which includes parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. Earlier this year, Chesapeake Energy equipment erupted in flames outside Philadelphia, and thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals spilled into a trout stream, forcing seven families to evacuate their homes.

Several U.S. states have moved to regulate fracking more strictly and to require disclosure of chemicals. France became the first country to ban fracking earlier this month.

The coalition brought its concerns to the BLM after the assessment was released in April. “They basically ignored all our concerns,” Vespa said, adding that if the agency does not respond to environmentalists’ concerns by September, “we can go to court.”

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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2011/07/fracking-monterrey-shale-bureau-of-land-and-management.html